Montes:Primero, felicidades on this new poetry
collection!It’s been almost ten years
since your last collection was published, entitled, Santo
de la Pata Alzada: Poems from the Queer/Xicano/Positive Pen.In what ways does Amorcito Maricón mark a new writing journey in your growth as a
poet?

Herrera y Lozano: ¡Gracias, Amelia! It’s
hard to believe it took nearly a decade to get to see another book come to
fruition.

To answer your question, I think Santo
de la Pata Alzada was in many ways a coming of age collection. In it (and
through it), I was trying and often struggling to make sense of, and mourn, the
loss of identities and beliefs, while affirming and celebrating newer and hopefully
healthier versions of myself. I had gone from being a fundamentalist
Pentecostal, closeted, and someone who self-identified as Hispanic, to an out
queer atheist who claimed Xicanismo as a path through which to move in the
world. I was angry and I was terrified. Most of what I knew to be true (the
existence of a one and only white god, patriotism, and the promise of a
colorblind world) had fallen apart. I was left with creating and understanding
anew what it meant to be in this same body, but now with a consciousness that
defied what was supposed to be infallible. I was also working through an HIV
diagnosis that was supposed to make my world crumble, but was instead a source
of strength, clarity, and pride. There are ways in which Santo de la Pata Alzada moved fast, as fast as I was moving at the
time. Turmoil, physical relocations, diagnosis, and coming into adulthood were
all happening at such an accelerated pace that it makes sense, in retrospect,
that the book would reflect that. I was writing a new self into being.

While Amorcito Maricón is a
continuation of my journey, I do think it marks a particular moment, a pause.
This book moves at a slower pace, these poems are less declared manifestos and
more snapshots, like Polaroid pictures of little and larger moments. I began
writing this book just as I was learning to slow down, to challenge myself to
be present and take in what and who was in front of me rather than fantasize
about what the future held. If this book marks a growth in my journey as a poet,
it is that I learned to stop moving long enough to notice, capture, and
articulate (to the best of my abilities) what and who was in front of me.

Montes:Amorcito Maricón is divided into three
sections:

(I) “Sarape-Covered
Couches,”

(II) “Caballero Saludos,”

(III) “Below Selena or Zapata.”I see these divisions this way:

First—a joto coming-of-age journey;

Second—a touching, humorous, as well as searing section of desire and loss;

Third— a nod to Emma Perez’s “Sexing the Colonial Imaginary” by writing “Jotos
into history” (she writes Chicanas into history).

How do you see these divisions?

Herrera y Lozano:You captured the intent of these
sections beautifully. The first section was my stepping into this book in the
aftermath of Santo de la Pata Alzada. It
was my way of answering the “What happens
next?” question of my first book, which was definitely a coming of age
collection. With “Sarape-Covered Couches,” I wanted to continue to pay homage
to my queer brown forefathers, those abandoned by families and countries alike.
For even when buried by their families, when their truths were hidden for the
sake of family honor or shame, these men were abandoned still. I am a part of
their lineage. I wanted to declare myself their descendant, a descendant of Reinaldo
Arenas, Roy Lozano, and countless others.

“Caballero Saludos” is about defiance and hope as much as it is about loss.
I wanted to confess, admit, and proclaim the deviances I have committed and
invite the reader to savor these with me. I wanted to take pride in those acts
we deem abhorrent, like desiring men, or worst yet, loving them. All while
claiming that sacred Mexican masculinity I was raised to embody, the one that
would never admit to caring for another man, much less desire or love him. I
sought to claim this masculinity both through imagery and the presence of
Spanish (this is where all the Spanish poems in the book live). I want the
reader to imagine Pedro Infante coming home after a long day of work, whistling
his way into the heart of a man who waits. I wanted to evoke Antonio Aguilar
galloping across Mexico’s arid northern terrain as I attempted to describe the
body of a lover. I wanted to take that which is most sacred to Mexicans – more
sacred than Jesus –: el hombre mexicano, and make him vulnerable in his
lovemaking, sus declaraciones de amor, and his fear of losing the ones he
desires and loves.

“Below Selena or Zapata” is very much about writing us into history. I
sought to follow the footsteps of the brilliant writer and poetic historian,
Marvin K. White, who penned the stunning poem “Making Black History.” As with
White, I wanted to insert our queer histories within broader cultural contexts,
contexts that patriarchy and heterosexism have fought hard to keep us out of. I
wanted to imagine Rodolfo Gonzales’ Joaquín as queer, just as Alma López
fiercely claimed La Virgen de Guadalupe as one of ours. At the same time, I
wanted this process of writing ourselves into history to be defiant of all
things sacred by canonizing the late Gwen Araujo and Panamanian poet Ana
Sisnett and rejecting the mythology of patriotism, hispanization, and a gay and
lesbian mythos that insists on normalizing us in the name of equality,
rendering us virtually asexual at best, and in its heteroinsistence, monolithically
sexual at worst.

Montes:There are such rich transnational and transcultural
intersections in this collection, alluding to writers (Reinaldo Arenas, Sandra
Cisneros, Pablo Neruda, and you just mentioned Ana Sisnett, Marvin K. White), singers, and composers
(Manuel Esperón, Jose Alfredo Jiménez, Selena, even Madonna).Was this your intention at the outset
or did these connections organically come together?

Herrera y Lozano:I think these transnational and
transcultural intersections reflect my life’s journey. I love Gloria Anzaldúa’s
notion of nepantla and imagine it is
a place that is neither static nor enclosed. Rather, this third space that is
at once in constant motion in itself while also being a place where other ways
of knowing and being transect, coalesce, and are in conflict. This is how I
make sense of the places I have lived, the people who have impacted my life,
the writers who have held my hands and heart, and the music that has carried me
through it all. These writers, singers, and composers are often witnesses, muses,
and refuge for this errant writer and his nomadic pen. The writers, singers,
and composers present in this book help tell the story that is Amorcito Maricón.

Montes:And in regard to “singers,” one cannot miss the
music in your poetry, the rhythms you create.For example, “Danzantes” catches the rhythm of the beat in
lines such as, “the temple stairs I toss my beating heart down.”Do you read your work out loud?How do you work through the
rhythms?

Herrera y Lozano:Often a poem comes to me through a line
or beat in a song. A spark that triggers a memory that triggers a vision that
triggers a line in a poem. This one line then becomes a title, the opening of a
poem, or ultimately ceases to exist in the editing process. But as the poem is
being crafted, I am constantly returning to that first line, beating the drum
of a memory to conjure scents, tastes, images. I wish I could say the rhythms
are an intentional part of my craft, but they are more subconscious and perhaps
more effective because of this. It isn’t until I am done with the poem that I
return to read it repeatedly until I find its beat. This is when I recognize it
and through it, begin to edit again.

Montes:Who are the writers and books that you come
back to read repeatedly?

Herrera y Lozano:When I find myself stuck and need help
falling in love with writing again, I return to the poetry of Sandra Cisneros (Loose Woman), Marvin K. White (Last Rights), Pablo Neruda (Cien Sonetos de Amor), T. Jackie Cuevas
(Otherhood, USA), and the work of
Rajasvini Bhansali. These writers I can (and do) read over and over and over
again. They are a literary obsession.

Montes:When you are writing, what does your routine
look like?

Herrera y Lozano:I have spent years trying to develop a
writing routine. I have none. I try to be proactive and sit at a table and tell
myself I will write a poem. Y nada. The muses refuse to cooperate. Poems, in my
experience, are caprichudos, selfish, and moody. They appear in the most
inconvenient time. Typically, I will be driving or in the shower when a poem
comes to me. I rush to jot down what I can without falling out of the shower or
getting in a car accident, and hope the muse will return when I am finally at a
place where I can write. Sometimes they return.

I am envious of writers who have succeeded at creating a routine. Imagine
all I could get done if I had one?

Montes:Do you first write in Spanish or in English
or does it depend on the feel of the poem?

Herrera y Lozano:I think the language of the poem
depends on the person and/or moment the poem is about, and how the poem begins
to surface. Because poems are often to someone,
they are in the language I would normally speak to that person, even if they
never read the poem or know it is about them (usually the latter). In some
ways, poems are imagined conversations and silent retelling of moments. It can
take years to read a poem aloud and often those who informed or inspired it are
no longer in my life. The poem becomes artifact.

For years I refused to consider the possibility of translating my poems. I
believed that if a poem came to me in Spanish it should always remain that way.
I am less militant about it now. There are a few poems I have translated into
either Spanish or English (though none in Amorcito
Maricón), though mostly as a writing exercise. I believe poems have agency,
they decide what language they want to be in the world as and this is how they
are birthed.

Montes: Taking, then, the metaphor of birthing a poem, which poems seemed to manifest and present themselves easier than others?

Herrera y Lozano:I find it much, much easier to write
about heartbreak. I blame and thank my grandmothers for exposing me to the
horrible beauty of telenovelas, and my father for exposing me to boleros and
gut-wrenching rancheras. By the time I was 8 years old, I knew what heartbreak
was and how to describe it. It would be years before my first heartbreak, but
when it happened, my pen was ready.

I love somber poetry. What Adelina Anthony calls the “Ay, qué sad” poems.
Poems that don’t quite cross over into the realm of self-deprecation, but bask
in the vulnerability that comes with renunciation and yearning. These poems
come naturally.

Happy poems, not so much.

Montes: Which poems had longer gestation periods?

Herrera y Lozano:Erotic poems take time to complete. I
spend so much time reliving or imagining moments in my head that with each pass
through another image surfaces. Another suspiro, a laugh, a look comes rushing
forward and I have to find a way to make room for it. I find that with
heartbreak or even love poems, it is not as difficult to bring them to an end.
There are only so many ways to say “ay, cómo me duele” or “I love you” in any
given poem. But there are infinite ways to describe the act of making love.

Montes:Nicely said, Lorenzo! These poems also insist on inhabiting Mexican and
U.S. spaces, which also reflect your own life growing up in both
countries.How do these poems
speak to your transnational identity and is there one poem in particular which
you feel best illustrates this border fluidity?

Herrera y Lozano:I wouldn’t know how to write from the
experiences of living in any one place alone. I was 10 when my family moved to
Chihuahua from San José, CA, almost 17 when I returned to California, and 21
when I moved to Austin, TX. All three places have left their mark— and scars. “Making
Chicano History,” I believe, is a poem that captures this transnationality:
histories, folklore, pop culture, cultura, food, and music. I write from what I
know and when all I know is informed by these experiences, they have no place
else to go but on the page.

Montes: Yes, and some writers feel they
must compartmentalize identity (Chicano in this poem, joto in this other
poem).Your poems seem to resist
this and instead reach for a hybridity of identity.

Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano

Herrera y Lozano:My greatest struggle as a young person
was having to decide between being queer and Xicano. Understanding that I
embody multiple identities simultaneously and that they did not have to be
separated, was one of the most life-changing lessons I have experienced. This
has been my world for over 15 years. I would not know how to write from the
sliver of one identity alone. I do not think that would be me anymore. All of
who I am is present in me always. Why wouldn’t it be in my poetry?

Montes:And what permeates throughout your writing are music beats and rhythms. Do you play an instrument?If not, what has been your experience with music in your
life?

Herrera y Lozano:Sadly, I cannot even whistle. I
auditioned to join a church choir when I was 17 and was gently rejected while
everyone else was admitted. Apparently my lack of musical talent was so severe
it could not even be drowned in a large choir. Yet, despite my musical
shortcomings, music has played an important role in my life since I was a
child. My father has an obsession with music and lyrics. I grew up with him
blaring rancheras, boleros, cumbias, and banda at all hours. There was never
room for our neighbors to doubt that Mexicans lived in our house. I still
cannot recognize a Morrissey (sorry, Chicanas/os!) or AC/DC song on the radio,
but have been able to recognize an Amalia Mendoza or Luis Demetrio song since I
was a child. (There is also no Juan Gabriel song recorded by him or others that
I do not know.)

Montes:In addition to your writing, you are also an
activist/advocate for fellow writers by your involvement with ALLGO , Macondo,
and founding Kórima Press.What is the importance of these organizations, this press, for Chicana and Chicano
writers, specifically for queer writers?

Herrera y Lozano:Everything I know about the role of the
arts in our communities I learned at ALLGO. It was my training ground, where I
learned that a movement without the arts was static and stale. It was where I
learned to rethink notions of legitimacy and to think critically the accessibility
of the arts in our communities. Organizations like ALLGO and Macondo play
crucial roles within a broader movement to surface and push forward the voices
of those who established institutions might otherwise look over. Even when some
of these artists are welcomed into the halls of these institutions, their work
also becomes part of this greater mission of elevating and fomenting.

Kórima Press was born out of these same principles. I believe it is
important that we both continue to bang on, and knock down, the doors of the
literary establishment while also continuing to be subversive and rooted in the
values that created artists out of us to begin with. Legitimacy that comes from
our communities, not institutions.

Montes:What does it mean for you to identify as a
queer Chicano writer?

Herrera y Lozano:To be a queer Chicano writer is to be a
part of a lineage, to practice a craft that predates us all. It is to be a part
of a large, ongoing conversation among writers of color who insist on making
sense of the world and who we are, while also articulating a kinder world where
we all exist and thrive in our wholeness. It is to embody the possibilities
that our multiple and simultaneous identities, and intersecting experiences
bring to literary traditions.

Montes:Now this is a big question.What is the state of Chicana and
Chicano queer poetry?Is it
continuing to grow?Who are the
Chicana and Chicano Queer poets today?What does the future look like for Chicana and Chicano queer writing?

Herrera y Lozano:It is such an exciting time to be queer
and Chicana/o. I remember coming out in 1999 and struggling to find writings by
people who looked, loved, and desired like me. There were a few, which were
hard to come by for those of us who did not have access to university and
technological resources (it was surely difficult for those who had access,
too). And while there were important publications at the time, today we count
with a growing number of works by writers in our communities. Anthologies,
single poetry collections, novels, plays, memoirs, the list continues to grow.

Of course, I must bring forth the writers of Kórima Press: Jesús Alonzo,
Adelina Anthony, Maya Chinchilla, Joseph Delgado, Anel Flores, Dino Foxx, Joe
Jiménez, Pablo Miguel Martínez, and Claudia Rodriguez. And of course, legendary
writers like Rigoberto González, Emma Pérez, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Cherríe
Moraga, Verónica Reyes, and Yosimar Reyes. While this list is nowhere near
beginning to be comprehensive, it is a quick snapshot of who we have the
opportunity to read today.

Montes:Any other thoughts you’d like to send to our La Bloga readers?

Herrera y Lozano: Thank you for getting to this part of the interview, for sticking through
my ramblings. And thank you for valuing queer Chicana and Chicano literature.
There are many more where I came from, and they are coming, and they are
fierce.